Richard Gonzales

Steve Barrett
/ N/A

Richard Gonzales is NPR's National Desk Correspondent based in San Francisco. Along with covering the daily news of region, Gonzales' reporting has included medical marijuana, gay marriage, drive-by shootings, Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, the U.S. Ninth Circuit, the California State Supreme Court and any other legal, political, or social development occurring in Northern California relevant to the rest of the country.

Gonzales joined NPR in May 1986. He covered the U.S. State Department during the Iran-Contra Affair and the fall of apartheid in South Africa. Four years later, he assumed the post of White House Correspondent and reported on the prelude to the Gulf War and President George W. Bush's unsuccessful re-election bid. Gonzales covered the U.S. Congress for NPR from 1993-94, focusing on NAFTA and immigration and welfare reform.

In September 1995, Gonzales moved to his current position after spending a year as a John S. Knight Fellow Journalism at Stanford University.

In 2009, Gonzales won the Broadcast Journalism Award from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. He also received the PASS Award in 2004 and 2005 from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for reports on California's juvenile and adult criminal justice systems.

Prior to NPR, Gonzales was a freelance producer at public television station KQED in San Francisco. From 1979 to 1985, he held positions as a reporter, producer, and later, public affairs director at KPFA, a radio station in Berkeley, CA.

Gonzales graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in psychology and social relations. He is a co-founder of Familias Unidas, a bi-lingual social services program in his hometown of Richmond, California.

Comedian Bill Cosby's attempt to have his deposition testimony about alleged sexual assaults resealed was rejected by a federal appeals court, which decided that the issue is moot because the details have already been published.

Two Fox News insiders have been tapped to fill the shoes of outgoing Chairman and Chief Executive Roger Ailes, who was forced to resign as a result of allegations he sexually harassed a former female news anchor.

Just 12 years ago, researchers feared that the California Island fox, a species about the size of a cat inhabiting a group of islands off the Southern California coast, was toast. Non-native predators and pesticides had dramatically reduced their ranks. The few that remained were placed on the endangered species list.

A federal jury found Pacific Gas and Electric Company guilty on five felony counts of failing to adequately inspect its gas pipelines before the blast that incinerated a neighborhood in San Bruno, Calif., in September 2010. The utility was also found guilty of one count of misleading federal investigators about the standard it used to identify high-risk pipelines.

PG&E was acquitted on six other charges of violating pipeline safety laws.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's bid for a reduction in his 14-year sentence for corruption was rejected today by a federal judge in Chicago. U.S. District Judge James Zagel upheld the sentence despite pleas for leniency from the disgraced ex-governor, his wife and two daughters.

Judge Zagel, acknowledged Blagojevich's family, saying "I am sympathetic to ... how painful this situation is to them. But as I said four years ago, the fault lies with the governor."

A new statue of the queen of comedy will be unveiled this weekend in her a hometown in Celoron, N.Y., and unlike the old one, this one actually looks like the Lucy everyone loves.

The new life-size bronze statue was created by noted sculptor Carolyn Palmer who won a national competition (involving more than 65 sculptors) for the honor of crafting a statue that will be unveiled on Aug. 6. It would have been Ball's 105th birthday.

The American bald eagle, once near-extinct, is back with a vengeance. And there's a rar e-- and frankly, brutal — video, perhaps the first ever footage of osprey predation by an eagle in Hog Island, Maine, to prove it.

The U.S. Navy plans to honor slain gay rights activist and former San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk by naming a ship after him. The USNS Harvey Milk, which hasn't been built yet, is the latest in a series of Navy vessels named for civil rights icons.

The Obama administration announced today that it is expanding a program that helps Central American refugees, including minors, to reunite with their families in the United States. The effort is designed to discourage people from leaving their homeland and flooding the southern U.S. border, say administration officials.

Hot gusty winds, bone-dry vegetation and low humidity are combining to whip up a deadly and fast-moving fire in Central California that has now claimed two lives near Lake Isabella, east of Bakersfield.

The fire began Thursday afternoon and soon overwhelmed the estimated 800 firefighters battling the blaze now. Officials say they hope to bring in a total of 1,000 firefighters. More than 1,900 acres have been burned and 100 structures destroyed. Thousands of people have evacuated.

The Brazilian laboratory that was designated to conduct drug testing for the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro has been suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency for not conforming to international standards.

News of the suspension came in a statement issued in Montreal. The decision can be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport within 21 days.

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah Sr. of Pennsylvania was found guilty today of multiple counts of racketeering, fraud and money laundering in a case involving his unsuccessful 2007 bid to become mayor of Philadelphia.

The Democratic congressman reacted to the verdict with little more than a smile as he consulted with his attorneys, The Associated Press reported.

Right now, Oakland, Calif., doesn't have a police chief. It's not for lack of trying. In fact, it's had three over the past two weeks. NPR's Richard Gonzales reports on the sex scandal which led to this chaos.

It's a mother's nightmare. She returns home one day and finds no trace of her only child, and the apartment she shares with the 18-month-old boy's father is ransacked. There are no baby clothes, no papers, no photographs, not even an ultrasound image of her son, Steven.

It's time to update your copy of the periodic table. Four new elements discovered in recent years have now been named, pending final approval by the international group of scientists in charge of the table.

Two gunmen opened fire in a central Tel Aviv food and retail center, killing four people Wednesday evening in what Israeli police say was a terrorist attack.

NPR's Emily Harris reports that Israeli medical authorities say that another four people were wounded. Local police tell Emily that two men were apprehended in the attack. Both are Palestinians in their 20s. They are cousins, according to the police, and from the same town near Hebron in the West Bank.

Washington, D.C., will be the next major city to implement a $15 minimum wage rate following a unanimous vote Tuesday by its city council.

In a victory for local and national labor unions, Washington joins the ranks of cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle in raising wages for primarily lower-income workers in restaurants, retail and other service industries.

The District's current hourly minimum wage is $10.50, and it was scheduled to go up to $11.50 next month under a law enacted in 2014.

In what's being called perhaps the biggest sports auction in history, Brazilian soccer legend Pele is auctioning off his collection of memorabilia and awards collected overmore than five decades.

The three-day auction of more than 2,000 items started Tuesday in London by the Los Angeles-based Julien's Auctions and is expected to bring in millions of dollars. Pele said in a statement that a portion of the proceeds are to go to Pequeno Principe, the largest children's hospital in Brazil.

Swiss voters over the weekend dealt a stern backslap to a ballot proposal that would have guaranteed a basic monthly income for all 8.1 million residents — regardless of their employment status — of that wealthy European nation.

The vote wasn't even close. Almost 77 percent of voters rejected the proposal that the government give every adult in Switzerland about $2,500 every month. (Children would have received a smaller subsidy of $650.)

The family of Kate Steinle, the 32-year-old woman who was killed in San Francisco last year allegedly by a man in the U.S. illegally, has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the city and two federal agencies, blaming them for her death.

The lawsuit was filed just before the anniversary of Steinle's death. The killing reignited an angry debate over so-called sanctuary city policies, which limit local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

This year's tax day marks a historic event for one group of Americans: April 18 will be the first time that every married same-sex couple in the country can file both their federal and state taxes together.

It's something Colleen and Linda Squires have been waiting for for a long time.

Not long ago, the city of Richmond, Calif., was considered one of the most dangerous cities in America. There was a skyrocketing homicide rate fueled by gangs of young men settling personal or territorial disputes.

The House today endorsed a lawsuit that challenges President Obama's executive actions on immigration. By a largely party-line 234-186 vote, the lawmakers authorized Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to file a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit brought by Texas and 25 other states. That suit argues the president overstepped his authority when he decided to block deportation of some four million immigrants.

Peter Mondavi, a pioneer of the Napa Valley wine industry, died over the weekend in California. He was 101.

Mondavi and his more famous brother, Robert, joined their parents' business, the Charles Krug Winery, in 1943. Back then, the Napa Valley was better known for producing prunes, and its grapes were grown for cheap jug wine. The Mondavi brothers, sons of Italian immigrants, would become key players in making the valley one of the world's premium wine-producing regions.

Updated at 4:24 p.m. on Feb. 17: Pedro Figueroa was released on bail from an ICE detention center on Feb. 3.Also, the San Francisco Police Department initially denied that it had cooperated with federal immigration agents. But an internal ICE document shows that the police and sheriff were in direct communication with ICE about Figueroa.

In Fresno, California — the heart of that state's agricultural community — police are looking for whoever attacked two elderly Sikh-American men. The incidents happened a week apart over the holidays. One man was fatally stabbed, another badly beaten.